You EVER-PRESENT CONSTRAINTS ON KNOWLEDGE. has some stories and fables to argue in favor of your point of view.
Your first story about the human in the railroad track does illustrate the kind of knowledge a person has in daily life situations. Most people never walk on railroad tracks, and we would not encourage anybody to do so, but we do understand your point.
You write: ” … The precise terms of my example are dialectically unimportant; what matters is the extremely limited menu of options. The person on the track is, quite literally, cornered. Her train of thought is suddenly coerced by her worldly environment into taking a certain direction—in this case a step sideways. What we have here, in essence, is a case of what the novel andmovie
The Godfather immortalized as “an offer you can’t refuse.” In otherwords, “choose” to do such and such—or die. That’s arguably a peculiar sort of “choice” (in decision theory, this situation is referred to as “Hobson’s choice,” after a man who would allow his horse-renting clients to choose only the horse nearest the stable door). … ”
You give the person in your story only two possibilities. Stay or jump sideways in the right direction when the train comes. But the menu of options is not limited. Will she jump to the left, to the right? Will she try to jump on the train? Will she run forward? Will she scream and stay unmovable? Will she lay down? Will she pray and expect the train to stop? Will she take her mobile phone and message someone to help her? Will she faint? Will the train stop?

Storytelling is fun. But storytelling in a philosophical text is dangerous. We could end up in quibbling about Minnesotan weather. (Mott, P.L. (1978) Verisimilitude by means of Short Theorems. Synthese 38, p 251 and Barnes E.C. (1991) Beyond Verisimilitude a Linguistically Invariant Basis for Scientific Progress, Synthese 88, p 313)

We do agree on knowledge about simple facts of life. I am sitting here and writing this text. Almost nobody does raise questions about these simple facts about me sitting here. Those are not the facts A. Sokal & J. Bricmont do write about. Nor does David Miller, a ‘notorious’ skeptical philosopher. The great discussion on objective knowledge is not so much about these little observable facts, but the big question of the skeptic is about scientific knowledge.
The big question is about generalizing theories, inductive arguments.

Our #ds106 friend Anna Cow did write a story about cyborgs.
She wrote:
I fear to be a cyborg. What If some nasty BigFarma or BigData or some CompuNerds made a cyborg of me? No aliens but nasty big firms trying to do something very evil? ? Think of the BigNerds trying to do nasty tests on cows and humans.

Jason Silva on a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUzFtWNOOOU is rather optimistic and jubilant about being a cyborg.
Could a cyborg be used as a soldier, or do more evil deeds because of this extra equipment?
In this world and in the future of the cyborg world would values and ethics be important in education and the curriculum, in teaching? Because of the power of cyborg possibilities?

Does the techno-realistic perspective give a better view on dangers and possibilities of technology?

Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Saint-Simon, Maistre zijn de zes vijanden van de vrijheid die Berlin in dit boek bespreekt. Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Saint-Simon, Maistre are the six enemies of freedom in this book of Isaiah Berlin.
In het tweede deel van het boek staat de ontwikkeling van Berlins ideeën over vrijheid beschreven aan de hand van lezingen.
The second part of the book about lectures “Two concepts of freedom” shows a development of thought in Berlins mind.
Berlin noemt de filosofie van Hegel een mythe, gebaseerd op metafysisch inzicht en geloof. Hieronder een citaat om dat te illustreren Hegel does not provide any evidence … it turns out to be a case of metaphysical insight and an act of faith. (page 86) Next a citation as an example of this

In therapy language is very important. .
BANDLER, RICHARD & GRINDER, JOHN; SATIR, VIRGINIA & BATESON, GREGORY etc. The Structure Of Magic I: A Book About Language And Therapy..Is an example of this connection.

In my opinion language in online courses needs a lot of thinking.

In online teaching many aspects of communication are lost. Most non-verbal communication is not possible. Even a teacher talking on video is not a quality replacement for F2F communication.
The teacher cannot watch the students, cannot see body language of students. Students cannot see each other and no teacher.

In my opinion this lack of important aspects of communication has to be taken care of. Online teaching needs careful communication.
We have to think and experiment about our language in online teaching. How could we use language to improve connections in online teaching?

Do we need to use words like: we, I or you, when we write texts for online courses?
Do we use passive or active verbal form or passive voice?

Tzvetan Todorov writes that the most important democratic value is pluralism. Monistic societies and governments as are communism and national socialism are not democratic. In education we should give pluralism an important place.

Pluralism in education is a movement that does not ask for teaching to the test and standard testing. It is about learning to live with differences in methods of teaching, about democracy and about pluralism as a key to research and learning.Proposed Changes in Education (this is in a wiki about citizenship & diversity)

from formal to informal

from exclusive to inclusive

from restrictive to experiential

from instructionist to constructivist

promotion of knowledge building, lifelong learning

promotion of inter-generational knowledge exchange

I am not writing about religious pluralism. In the USA pluralism also is used to talk about racial matters. Both are important issues.

#rhizo14 has a narrow view on learning: Learning by students in school.
Learning is a human quality, and school is by far not the only place where humans do learn. In one of the first weeks the incident in Facebook about academics was prophetic as in many blogs and facebook messages now the subject is academic.

To describe learning we do not need the Rhizome-word. Humans do learn, humans are always learning. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. One learns all kinds of things, easy, spontaneous. Where to find the coffee in the supermarket. How to find your way in your neighborhood. Humming that song. The name of your favorite people. Humans learn, without end. This natural free style learning is connected, effortless, not determined, not voluntary, endless.
Does the R-word add something to our understanding of learning? Or is the R-word an obstacle? Maybe the R-word was a pedagogical affordance to make teachers think about learning?

Could R-learning make a student an academic? No, because an academic is a person who learns goal directed. That is what an academic is. Is wandering around and free-learning needed for an academic? The academic does work in an academic discipline as it is sometimes called. If we do not work to form connection we may follow the wrong god home. (Danielle Paradis) Free wandering learning could be useful even for an academic.

I do enjoy #rhizo14 because of the conversation and to meet you online.

Rereading an old book of Umberto Eco I find an essay ‘Voor een semiotische guerrilla’ (To a semiotic guerrilla).
In this essay Umberto Eco writes about mass media and decoding.

Eco gives a short semiotic lecture about messages: The source of a message uses a code to assemble a message.
The message is transported via a channel. The reader uses code to translate, decode or read the message. (Some do not use the channel bur they use “medium”. I prefer channel)

Umberto Eco stresses the importance of decoding or reading the message with a code that is chosen by the reader. The reader should not uncritically use the code of the source.

The guerrilla is the struggle to make this critical decoding happen when someone is reading mass communication messages, newspaper or television.
In my opinion this ‘guerrilla’ should be used in education. An educational guerrilla to make the student-reader use his own codes to read mass media, books, blogs or whatever. This decoding by the student is linked to the student as producer.

Essay is in Dutch, translation in “de alledaagse onwerkelijkheid”, 1985, uitg. Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, no mention of title of source for translation. Essay was a contribution to the Congres ‘Vision ’67’ in New York oktober 1967, of Internat. Center for Communications. Art and Sciences.